N01625:209
Three sermons lately preached at Boston. I. Showing the virtue of Christs blood to…Three sermons lately preached at Boston. I. Shewing the vertue of Christs blood to…
Three sermons lately preached at Boston. I. Showing the virtue of Christs blood to cleanse from sin. II. That natural men are under the government of self-love. III. That the Gospel is the means of conversion. : To which a fourth is added, to stir up young men and maidens to praise the name of the Lord. / By Solomon Stoddard A.M. Pastor of Northampton.Three sermons lately preached at Boston. I. Shewing the vertue of Christs blood to cleanse from sin. II. That natural men are under the government of self-love. III. That the Gospel is the means of conversion. : To which a fourth is added, to stir up young men and maidens to praise the name of the Lord. / By Solomon Stoddard A.M. Pastor of Northampton.
printed by B. Green for Daniel Henchman, 1717
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. This will be no burden to you when you come to die. The living know that they must die. You don't expect to continue here always: You are but Strangers in the world, and you don't know but you may die quickly; there is nothing in your Nature, or condition, or in the word of God, that doth secure long life unto you. Man is as grass, & the glory of man as the flower of the field that fadeth away, Isai. ⟨p. 110⟩40.6. And if you don't praise God, that will make it hard work to die: if you haven't done the work that you were sent into the World for, that will be heavier than the pains of death: it will sting you to remember your life past: how will you dare to go before God to Judgment? It is a doleful condition, when you must die, and yet dare not die. Eccl. 5.17. He hath much sorrow & wrath with his sickness. Conscience will lay that charge upon you, Dan. 5.23. The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou has not glorified. And you will take up that lamentation, Prov. 5.12, 13. How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; I have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ears to them that instructed me. But if you improve your time in serving God, that will be no affliction to you in the evil day, but a comfort; it will be an ease in death, a relief under your pains, a cordial against faintings. That was a great comfort to Hezekiah when he lay at the point of death. Isai. 28.3. He said, Remember now Lord I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. If you don't praise the Lord, you would (in vain) desire that God would forget what you had done; it will be a terror to you to remember and to think that God doth remember what you have done.
2. This will be no burden to you when you come to die. The living know that they must die. You don't expect to continue here always: You are but Strangers in the world, and you don't know but you may die quickly; there is nothing in your Nature, or condition, or in the word of God, that doth secure long life unto you. Man is as grass, & the glory of man as the flower of the field that fadeth away,